Latest Tactic to Block Health Care Reform? Scare Senior Citizens

Here's an article worth reading if you are need of a response to someone who maintains that the Obama plan for universal health care includes a euthanasia provision for senior citizens.

Michael Goforth: AARP rebuts claims of health care reform impact on seniors

If I were a senior citizen and believed some of the claims being made concerning the potential impact of health care reform on seniors, I’d be fighting against changes.

In recent weeks, particular concerns have been raised by Betsy McCaughey, a former New York lieutenant governor and self-proclaimed patient advocate. In a column and on talk shows, she has claimed that a provision in the health reform package includes a requirement that seniors on Medicare be given “end of life” counseling, essentially telling seniors how to end their lives sooner as a means of cost savings.

Some lawmakers have contended that amounts to government endorsement of euthanasia.

That would be a despicable and deplorable mandate and should anger seniors and their families if it were true.

On Saturday, the AARP, the nation’s largest advocacy organization for senior citizens, challenged McCaughey’s claim as a “gross, and even cruel, distortion.”

A statement from John Rother, the organization’s executive vice president, was posted on its Web site:

“Ms. McCaughey’s criticism misinterprets legislation that would actually help empower individuals and doctors to make their own choices on end-of-life care. This measure would allow Medicare to pay doctors for taking the time to talk with individuals about difficult end-of-life decisions ...

“Facing a terminal disease or debilitating accident, some people will choose to take every possible lifesaving measure in the hopes that treatment or even a cure will allow them more time with their families. Others will decide that additional treatment would impose too great a burden — emotional, physical and otherwise — on themselves and their families, declining extraordinary measures and instead choosing care to manage their discomfort. Either way, it should be their choice.”

In addition, the bill provides that doctors and patients be able to compare different types of treatments to find out which may work best for the patient.

“The main opponents of this research are those groups with a vested interest in a health are system that wastes billions of dollars each year on ineffective or unnecessary drugs, treatments or tests,” Rother said. “Given Ms. McCaughey’s position as a director of a medical device producer, I would hope that any potential conflict of interest has not influenced her commentary.”

There was more:

“AARP is committed to improving the quality, effectiveness and affordability of health are for our 40 million members and their families. We will fight any measure that would prevent individuals and their doctors from making their own health care decisions. We will also fight the campaign of misinformation that vested interests are using to try to scare older Americans in order to protect the status quo. Profits should never be allowed to come before people in this debate.”

This debate over what should or should not be included in a health care reform package is intense and will continue to be. And, as there are numerous complexities in trying to change such a massive system, there are certain to be differing perspectives on its aspects. And, there is some degree of misinformation being publicized by all parties involved.

Key to understanding and making personal decisions for or against reform measures is to treat each ”expert opinion” with a healthy dose of skepticism, to consider the potential motives, political or financial, that the source may have, and to weigh the levels of trust or distrust one may have in the messenger.

As we have learned too often in recent partisan debates, if misinformation spreads far enough and loudly enough, it becomes “fact.” And, when that happens, people can take positions directly opposite of their own best interests and end up losing when they think they may be winning.

michael.goforth@scripps.com